City Council will have final say on firehouse fate

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A rendering shows what a portion of a mixed-use development proposed by
SiliconSage Builders along Fremont Boulevard could look like if Fire
Station 6 were to be demolished. (Image courtesy city of Fremont)

A rendering shows what a portion of a mixed-use project along Fremont
Boulevard could look like if the Fire Station 6 were retained and
rehabilitated. (Image courtesy city of Fremont)

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A rendering shows what a portion of a mixed-use project proposed by
SiliconSage Builders could look like along Fremont Boulevard at the corner
of Parish Avenue. (Image courtesy city of Fremont)

A view of the front of the former Fire Station No. 6 building along Fremont Boulevard, seen above in 2017. (Joseph Geha/Bay Area News Group)

A view of the rear of the former Fire Station No. 6 building along Fremont Boulevard, seen above in 2017. (Joseph Geha/Bay Area News Group)

A rendering shows what the south side of the Fire Station No. 6 in Fremont's historic Centerville district could look like if it was retained andrehabilitated. (Image courtesy city of Fremont)

FREMONT — An old fire station in Fremont’s historic Centerville district should be razed to make way for a major retail and housing development that would reshape an entire block, the city’s planning commission decided Thursday night.

The commission’s 4-2 vote, with Kathryn McDonald and Reena Rao dissenting, disregarded the recommendations of the city’s Historical Architectural Review Board and staff to preserve and rehabilitate Fire Station No. 6, at 37412 Fremont Blvd.

The Fremont City Council will have final say on the fire station’s fate, likely at its March 5 meeting.

More than 30 people spoke at the meeting, many of them saying the firehouse is a blight and shouldn’t stand in the middle of a new development.

Others said the firehouse should be saved and the developer required to rehabilitate the building to serve as a touchstone to history and a public gathering space.

Sunnyvale-based SiliconSage Builders plans to build 93 apartments with 26,000 square feet of ground-floor retail across several three- and four-story buildings on Fremont Boulevard, between Parish Avenue and Peralta Boulevard. The project would also include 72 three-story townhouses between the apartments and Jason Way to the east.

Ten of the apartments would be designated as below market rate.

The staff and historical board had recommended that the apartment buildings be reconfigured just north of the firehouse “to reduce upper-floor bulk.” That would reduce the number of apartments from 93 to 81 and retail space by 1,000 square feet.

“I’m a little saddened to see the historic texture of Centerville being subsumed into the generic look of much of the larger downtown area of Fremont,” city resident Robert Daulton said.

“The fire station should be considered as a gemstone, and the development as the ring,” he said. “The setting should fit the stone, not vice versa.”

“With respect to the fire station, one man’s gemstone is another person’s eyesore,” resident Kathleen Faubion said later.

“It may have been useful at the time, but in my opinion it’s just ugly as sin, and if it fell down tomorrow, it wouldn’t be a loss to the city,” she added.

If the fire station is rehabilitated as recommended, an entrance would be created on the southwestern side of the building, which was built in 1954 before the city incorporated.

The fire station was decommissioned in 2008 after being deemed seismically unsafe and a replacement was built on the corner of Central Avenue and Dusterberry Drive.

A 2007 historical study determined the fire station qualified for the California Register because of its architectural significance.

At an Oct. 3, 2017 meeting, the City Council recommended the fire station be rehabilitated by the developer and that the city retain ownership so the building could someday be turned into public use such as a preschool.

Later that month, however, a consultant found that even if the station is preserved, building the proposed development around it “would still result in a substantial adverse change” because the low adjacent buildings would be removed.

And any rehabilitation would lessen the station’s historic value by removing some of its defining features, such as a metal canopy at the rear and an original metal staircase at the northwest corner, according to a city report.

Kathy Kimberlin, president of the Centerville Business and Community Association, said the area near the firehouse is “scary” and “unclean,” so the building should be removed.

“We want people to see and feel the history of Fremont,” Kimberlin said. She told commissioners the developer could work with the community to help create “long-lasting memorabilia” along that stretch of Fremont Boulevard “that will bring the history of Centerville alive, including the history of the fire station.”

“I’m a bit gobsmacked about how we can honor history by demolishing history,” said Tim Swenson, a board member of the Washington Township Museum of Local History and author of the Centerville Walking Tour.

“You don’t want to go down a street and say, ‘Here’s all the buildings that used to be here,’ ” he said.

Joseph Geha is a multimedia journalist covering Fremont, Newark, and Union City for the Bay Area News Group, and is based at The Argus. His prior work has been seen in multiple Bay Area news outlets, including SF Weekly, as well as on KQED and KLIV radio. He is a graduate of California State University, East Bay (Hayward), and is a Fremont native. He is a lifelong Oakland Athletics fan.

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